political systemthe set of formal legal institutions that constitute a “government” or a “state.” This is the definition adopted by many studies of the legal or constitutional arrangements of advanced political orders. More broadly defined, however, the term comprehends actual as well as prescribed forms of political behaviour, not only the legal organization of the state but also the reality of how the state functions. Still more broadly defined, the political system is seen as a set of “processes of interaction” or as a subsystem of the social system interacting with other nonpolitical subsystems, such as the economic system. This points to the importance of informal sociopolitical processes and emphasizes the study of political development.

Traditional legal or constitutional analysis, using the first definition, has produced a huge body of literature on governmental structures, many of the specialized terms that are a part of the traditional vocabulary of political science, and several instructive classifying schemes. Similarly, empirical analysis of political processes and the effort to identify the underlying realities of governmental forms have yielded a rich store of data and an important body of comparative theory. The third definition has inspired much scholarly work that employs new kinds of data, new terms, and some new concepts and categories of analysis. The discussion that follows draws on all three approaches to the study of political systems.

Typologies of government

The most important type of political system in the modern world is the nation-state. The world today is divided territorially into more than 175 states190 countries, in each of which a national government claims to exercise sovereignty—or the power of final authority—and seeks to compel obedience to its will by its citizens. This fact of the world’s political organization suggests the distinction employed in the following section among supranational, national, and subnational political systems.

Supranational political systems

The formation of supranational relationships is a principal result of the division of the world into a number of separate national entities, or states, that have contact with one another, share goals or needs, and face common threats. In some cases, as in many alliances, these relationships are short-lived and fail to result in significant institutional development. In other cases, they lead to interstate organizations and supranational systems. The discussion below examines several types of supranational political systems, together with historical and contemporary examples of each.

Empires

Because they are composed of peoples of different cultures and ethnic backgrounds, all empires are ultimately held together by coercion and the threat of forcible reconquest. Imposing their rule on diverse political structures, they are characterized by the centralization of power and the absence of effective representation of their component parts. Although force is thus the primary instrument of imperial rule, it is also true that history records many cases of multiethnic empires that were governed peaceably for considerable periods and were often quite successful in maintaining order within their boundaries. The history of the ancient world is the history of great empires—Egypt, China, Persia, and imperial Rome—whose autocratic regimes provided relatively stable government for many subject peoples in immense territories over many centuries. Based on military force and religious belief, the ancient despotisms were legitimized also by their achievements in building great bureaucratic and legal structures, in developing vast irrigation and road systems, and in providing the conditions for the support of high civilizations. Enhancing and transcending all other political structures in their sphere, they could claim to function as effective schemes of universal order.

In contrast to the empires of the ancient world, the colonial empires of more recent times fell far short of universal status. In part, these modern European empires were made up of “colonies” in the original Greek sense; peopled by immigrants from the mother country, the colonies usually established political structures similar to those of the metropolitan centre and were often able to exercise a substantial measure of self-government. In part, also, the European empires were composed of territories inhabited by native populations and administered by imperial bureaucracies. The government of these territories was generally more coercive than in the European colonies and more concerned with protection and supervision of the commercial, industrial, and other exploitative interests of the imperial power. The disintegration of these empires occurred with astonishing speed. The two world wars of the 20th century sapped the power of the metropolitan centres, while their own doctrines of democracy, equality, and self-determination undermined the principle of imperial rule. Powers such as Britain and France found it increasingly difficult to resist claims to independence couched in terms of the representative concepts on which their home governments were based, and they lacked the military and economic strength to continue their rule over restive native populations. In the two decades after 1945, nearly all the major colonial territories won their independence; the great colonial empires that had once ruled more than half the world were finally dismembered.

Leagues

One of the commonest forms of supranational organization in history is that of leagues, generally composed of states seeking to resist some common military or economic threat by combining their forces. This was the case with the early city leagues, such as the Achaean and Aetolian leagues in ancient Greece and the Hanseatic and the Swabian leagues in Europe; and to a great extent it was the case with the League of Nations. Other common features of leagues include the existence of some form of charter or agreement among the member states, an assembly of representatives of the constituent members, an executive organ for the implementation of the decisions of the assembly of representatives, and an arbitral or judicial body for adjudicating disputes.

The League of Nations was one of the great experiments in supranational organization of the 20th century and the predecessor in several important respects of the United Nations. The Covenant of the League was drafted by a special commission of the Peace Conference after World War I, with Pres. Woodrow Wilson of the United States as its leading advocate, and approved by a plenary conference of the victorious powers in 1919. The initial membership of the League consisted of 20 states. The United States failed to take membership in the League, but by 1928 the organization had a total membership of 54. The machinery of the League consisted of an Assembly of all the member nationscountries, acting through agents of their governments; a council on which the great powers were permanently represented and to which the other member powers were elected by the Assembly for three-year terms; a Secretariat to administer the internal affairs of the League; and a number of specialized agencies, such as the International Labour Organisation, that were responsible for implementing various economic and humanitarian programs on an international basis. The Covenant required that international disputes be submitted to peaceful settlement with a provision for adjudication or arbitration by the Permanent Court of International Justice or for intervention by the Council of the League. The Covenant also provided for the use of financial and economic penalties, such as embargoes, to enforce the decisions of the League and for joint military action against convicted aggressors. In practice, however, the League failed its most important tests and was unable to master the crises that led to World War II and its own collapse.

Confederations and federations

Confederations are voluntary associations of independent states that, to secure some common purpose, agree to certain limitations on their freedom of action and establish some joint machinery of consultation or deliberation. The limitations on the freedom of action of the member states may be as trivial as an acknowledgment of their duty to consult with each other before taking some independent action or as significant as the obligation to be bound by majority decisions of the member states. Confederations usually fail to provide for an effective executive authority and lack viable central governments; their member states typically retain their separate military establishments and separate diplomatic representation; and members are generally accorded equal status with an acknowledged right of secession from the confederation. The term federation is used to refer to groupings of states, often on a regional basis, that establish central executive machinery to implement policies or to supervise joint activities. In some cases such groupings are motivated primarily by political or economic concerns; in others, military objectives are paramount.

Historically, confederations have often proved to be a first or second step toward the establishment of a national state, usually as a federal union. Thus, the federal union of modern Switzerland was preceded by a confederation of the Swiss cantons; Germany’s modern federal arrangements may be traced to the German Confederation of the 19th century (the Deutsche Bund); and the federal constitution of the United States is the successor to the government of the Articles of Confederation. In some other cases, confederations have replaced more centralized arrangements, as, for example, when empires disintegrate and are replaced by voluntary associations of their former colonies. The British Commonwealth, or Commonwealth of Nations, and the French Community are cases of this type.

An example of confederal arrangements that gave birth to a federal union is the Articles of Confederation (1781–89) that preceded the Constitution of the United States. The Articles established a Congress of the confederation as a unicameral assembly of ambassadors from the 13 states, each possessing a single vote. The Congress was authorized to appoint an executive committee of states

to execute, in the recess of Congress, such of the powers of Congress as the United States, in Congress assembled, by the consent of nine States, shall from time to time think expedient to vest them with;

in turn, the committee of states could appoint a presiding officer or president for a term of one year. The Congress could also appoint such other committees and “civil officers as may be necessary for managing the general affairs of the United States” and was given the authority to serve as “the last resort or appeal in all disputes and differences, now subsisting or that hereafter may arise between two or more states.” Although the Congress was given authority in important areas such as the regulation of foreign affairs, the establishment of coinage and weights and measures, the appointment of officers in the confederation’s land and naval forces, and the issuance of bills of credit, all its powers were in fact dependent for their enforcement upon the states. The Congress lacked both an independent source of revenue and the executive machinery to enforce its will directly upon individuals. As the language of the Articles summarized the situation,

each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled.

The Commonwealth (formerly the British Commonwealth of Nations) is an example of a confederation born as the result of the decentralization and eventual disintegration of an empire. The original members in 1931 were the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, the Irish Free State (Ireland), Newfoundland, New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa. In 1949 Newfoundland became a province of Canada, and the Irish Free State became an independent republic; South Africa became an independent republic in 1961. New commonwealth Ireland withdrew from the Commonwealth. In 1961 South Africa also withdrew from the organization, although it rejoined in 1994. Several new Commonwealth members in the latter half of the 20th century were newly independent former British colonies, such as Malaysia (1957), Cyprus (1961), and Kiribati (1979), and numbered well over 40.Brunei (1984). Namibia joined in 1990 upon gaining independence from South Africa. By the early 21st century, the Commonwealth had grown to include more than 50 members. It also had embraced countries—i.e., Mozambique (1995) and Rwanda (2009)—that lacked colonial ties to Britain.

The Statute of Westminster (1931) established that all members were equal in status. The London Declaration (1949) permitted members to be republics, although all recognized member countries must recognize the British monarch as the symbolic head of the commonwealthCommonwealth. Commonwealth governments were are represented in the capitals of other commonwealth Commonwealth countries by high commissioners equal in status to ambassadors. In 1965 the commonwealth established its Secretariat to organize The Commonwealth Secretariat organizes meetings, keep keeps the membership informed, and implement implements its collective decisions. The Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation, which is financed by all member states, was implemented to provide technical assistance to less-developed states. The nations of the commonwealth rarely acted in concert on the international scene, and, despite fairly regular meetings of the commonwealth prime ministers, there were at times severe strains in the relations among several of the member states. The fairly general use of the English language and of English common law, together with some common symbols and remaining cultural affinities, appeared to be the major ties binding together this loose association.

Federations

The term federation is used to refer to groupings of states, often on a regional basis, that establish central executive machinery to implement policies or to supervise joint activities. In some cases such groupings are motivated primarily by political or economic concerns; in others, military objectives are paramount. Examples of the former include the European Communities (EC), actually a combination of three main structures—the Member countries have benefited from trade privileges, technical assistance, and educational exchanges. In the second half of the 20th century, the Commonwealth formulated a mission of promoting democracy, economic development, and human rights.

The European Union (EU) is a supranational organization that, while resisting strict classification as either a confederation or a federation, has both confederal and federal aspects. Its predecessor, the European Communities (EC)—comprising the European Coal and Steel Community, established in 1952; the European Economic Community (Common Market), established in 1958; and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), established in 1958. The Communities quickly —quickly developed executive machinery exercising significant regulatory and directive authority over the governments and private business firms of the member countries. Although each of the member governments retains a substantial measure of sovereignty, and a systematic effort by one or more of the governments to resist the authority of the Communities’ agencies could endanger the whole fabric of cooperative effort, the Communities have developed significant supranational features. These include the staffing of executive organs with persons other than governmental representatives, the making of binding decisions on important matters by majority vote, and the capability of the Communities’ agencies to deal directly and authoritatively with individuals and companies within the member states. For example, the high authority of the Coal and Steel Community acts by majority vote of its members, without instruction from any of the governments, to “assure the achievement of the purposes stated in the Treaty”; and in pursuing this function it involves itself deeply in the economies of each of the member nationsWhen the communities were subsumed under the EU in 1993, the EU inherited this executive authority. Yet, despite the EU’s central executive machinery (a key feature of a federal system), each of the member governments retains a substantial measure of national sovereignty—an important aspect of confederal arrangements.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance established in April 1949, also is an example of a modern military alliance endowed with complex and permanent executive machinery, employing multilateral procedures , and involving the continuous elaboration of plans for the conduct of joint military action by its member states(Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States). As stated in its treaty, the purpose of NATO is to maintain the security of the North Atlantic area by exercise of the right of collective security recognized in the Charter of the United Nations. An impressive array of institutional mechanisms was established, including a secretary-general and a permanent staff, a council, a military command structure, and liaison staffs; and an ongoing system of collaboration in planning and joint military exercises was brought into being. With the continued development of its organization, NATO gradually added a number of economic and cultural activities to its functions until it came to possess several of the features of a multipurpose supranational organization. As in the EU, however, membership in NATO does not override national sovereignty.

The United Nations organization

A Another supranational political system that does not precisely fit precisely any of the conventional classifications of such systems is the United Nations, a voluntary association of most of the world’s nation-states. Its membership had grown from an original 51 states to more than 175 190 by the late 20th early 21st century. (The government of the People’s Republic of China was admitted in place of the government of Taiwan in 1971.) The United Nations was founded in 1945 at a conference in San Francisco that was attended by representatives of all the nations countries that had declared war on Germany or Japan. The purposes of the organization are declared in its Charter to be the maintenance of international peace and security, the development of friendly relations among states, and international cooperation in solving the political, economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian problems of the world. Its organizational structure consists of a Security Council of five permanent members (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and 10 nonpermanent members elected for two-year terms, a General Assembly, a secretary-general and a Secretariat, an Economic and Social Council, a Trusteeship Council, and the International Court of Justice. Attached to the United Nations are a number of specialized agencies, including the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization, the International Labour Organisation, the International Monetary Fund, the International Telecommunications Union, the Universal Postal Union, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the World Health Organization, and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank).

Aside from the rather generally stated and decidedly elusive aims of the Charter, the member states of the United Nations cannot be said to have any common goal, and they have often failed to unify in the face of common external threats to security. There also has been difficulty in reaching and implementing decisions. Two different formulas are employed for voting in the two principal organs, the General Assembly and the Security Council. In the General Assembly a two-thirds majority decides on important matters, but, since the Assembly’s decisions are not binding and are merely recommendations, this qualified majority principle must be viewed as of little significance. Although, on the other hand, the decisions of the Security Council may be binding, a unanimous vote of all five of the permanent members joined by the votes of at least four of the nonpermanent members is required; whenever important questions of peace and security are at stake, it has rarely been possible to achieve agreement among the five great powers of the council. Although these difficulties might be fatal to the survival of many supranational organizations, they are not in fact totally debilitating for the United Nations. The United Nations continues to serve as a very important forum for international debate and negotiation, and its specialized agencies play an important role in what is sometimes referred to as “the functional approach to peace.”

National political systems

The term nation-stateis used so commonly and yet defined so variously that it will be necessary to indicate its usage in this article with some precision and to give historical and contemporary examples of nation-states. To begin with, there is no single basis upon which such systems are established. Many states were formed at a point in time when a people sharing a common history, culture, and language discovered a sense of identity. This was true in the cases of England and France, for example, which were the first nation-states to emerge in the modern period, and of Italy and Germany, which were established as nation-states in the 19th century. In contrast, however, other states, such as India, the Soviet Union, and Switzerland, came into existence without a common basis in raceethnicity, culture, or language. It must also be emphasized that contemporary nation-states are creations of different historical periods and of varied circumstances. Before the close of the 19th century, the effective mobilization of governmental powers on a national basis had occurred only in Europe, the United States, and Japan. It was not until the 20th century and the collapse of the Ottoman, Habsburg, French, and British empires that the bulk of the world could be fully organized on a national basis. This transformation was completed in 1991 continued with the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. Soviet Union, which ceased to exist in 1991, and Yugoslavia, which finally disappeared from the map in 2003. In 1920 the League of Nations had recognized seven nation-states as “Great Powers” (BritainPowers”—the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia) and Russia—and it eventually admitted more than 40 other states to membership; . Its successor, the United Nations, had more than 175 190 member states in the late 20th early 21st century. States in the post-Cold War world include the United States as the preeminent power; the established powers of Britain, France, China, Japan, Germany, and Russia; emerging powers such as Ukraine and Brazil; and a host of old and new states such as Denmark, Namibia, Kazakhstan, Switzerland, Egypt, Turkey, Malaysia, and ChileGreat Powers, which, along with Canada, now constitute the highly industrialized countries known as the Group of Eight (G8); numerous other populous and prominent countries, such as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Egypt, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and Venezuela; and a host of other states, from the tiny Pacific island country of Nauru to the vast Central Asian country of Kazakhstan.

The characteristics that qualify these variously composed and historically differing entities as nation-states and distinguish them from other forms of social and political organization amount in sum to the independent power to compel obedience from the populations within their territories. The state is, in other words, a territorial association that may range in size from Russia to Singapore, in population from China to Luxembourg, and that claims supremacy over all other associations within its boundaries. As an association, the state is peculiar in several respects: membership is compulsory for its citizens; it claims a monopoly of the use of armed force within its borders; and its officers, who are the government of the state, claim the right to act in the name of the land and its people.

A definition of the state in terms only of its powers over its members is not wholly satisfactory, however. Although all states make a claim to supremacy within their boundaries, they differ widely in their ability to make good their claims. States are, in fact, often challenged by competing associations within their boundaries; their supremacy is often more formal than real; and they are sometimes unable to maintain their existence. Moreover, a definition in terms of power alone ignores the fact that there are great differences among states in the structures they employ for the exercise of power, in the ways they use power, and in the ends to which they turn their power. Some of these differences are explored in the discussion that follows of two general categories of nation-states: the unitary state and the federal state. Partly from administrative necessity and partly because of the pressures of territorial interests, nearly all modern states provide for some distribution of governmental authority on a territorial basis. Systems in which power is delegated from the central government to subnational units and in which the grant of power may be rescinded at the will of the central government are termed unitary systems. Systems in which a balance is established between two autonomous sets of governments, one national and the other provincial, are termed federal. In federal systems, the provincial units are usually empowered to grant and take away the authority of their own subunits in the same manner as national governments in unitary systems. Thus, although the United States is federally organized at the national level, each of the 50 states is in a unitary relationship to the cities and local governments within its own territory.

Unitary nation-states

A great majority of all the world’s nation-states are unitary systems, including Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Great Britain, The the Netherlands, Japan, Poland, Romania, the Scandinavian countries, Spain, and many of the Latin - American and African countries. There are great differences among these unitary states, however, specifically in the institutions and procedures through which their central governments interact with their territorial subunits.

In one type of unitary system, decentralization of power among subnational governments goes so far that in practice, although not in constitutional principle, they resemble federal arrangements. In Great Britain, for example, there are important elements of regional autonomy in the relationship between Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland and the national government in London; and the complex system of elected local governments, although in constitutional theory subject to abrogation by Parliament, is in practice a fixed and fairly formidable part of the apparatus of British government. In other unitary systems of this type, decentralization on a territorial basis is actually provided for constitutionally, and the powers of locally elected officials are prescribed in detail. Thus, the Japanese constitution, for example, specifies certain autonomous functions to be performed by local administrative authorities.

A second type of unitary system makes substantially less provision for territorial decentralization of authority and employs rather strict procedures for the central supervision of locally elected governments. The classic example of this type is pre-1982 France. Until March 1982, when a law on decentralization went into effect, the French administrative system was built around départements, each headed by a préfet, and subdivisions of the départements, termed arrondissements, each headed by a sous-préfet. The préfets and sous-préfets were appointed by the government in Paris to serve as agents of the central government and also as the executives of the divisional governments, the conseils généraux, which were composed of elected officials. The system thus combined central supervision of local affairs through appointed officials with territorial representation through locally elected governments. (Following the passage of the decentralization law, the executive powers of the préfets were transferred to the elected conseils généraux; moreover, many functions previously performed by the central government were devolved to the newly created régions, units of local government that each encompassed a number of départements and that were overseen by directly elected regional councils.)

Yet a third type of unitary system provides for only token decentralization. In such cases, the officials responsible for managing the affairs of the territorial subdivisions are appointees of the central government, and the role of locally elected officers is either minimal or nonexistent. Examples of this kind of arrangement include Germany under Adolf Hitler and also several formerly Communist communist countries. The Third Reich was divided into 42 Gaue, each headed by a gauleiter chosen for his personal loyalty to Hitler. In eastern Europe, the people’s councils or people’s committees were named by the centrally organized Communist communist parties; their appointment was confirmed by elections with one slate of candidates.

Federal systems

In federal systems, political authority is divided between two autonomous sets of governments, one national and the other subnational, both of which operate directly upon the people. Usually a constitutional division of power is established between the national government, which exercises authority over the whole national territory, and provincial governments that exercise independent authority within their own territories. Of the eight largest countries in the world by area, seven—Argentinaseven—Russia, AustraliaCanada, the United States, Brazil, CanadaAustralia, India, Russia, and the United States—are Argentina—are organized on a federal basis. Federal states (China, the third largest, is a unitary state.) Federal countries also include Austria, Germany, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Switzerland, and Venezuela.

The governmental structures and political processes found in these federal systems show great variety. One may distinguish, first, a number of systems in which federal arrangements reflect rather clear-cut cultural divisions. A classic case of this type is Switzerland, where the people speak four different languages—German, French, Italian, and Romansh—and the federal system unites 26 historically and culturally different entities, known as cantons and demicantons. The Swiss constitution of 1848, as modified in 1874, converted into the modern federal state a confederation originally formed in the 13th century by the three forest cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden. The principal agencies of federal government are a bicameral legislature, composed of a National Council representing the people directly and a Council of States representing the constituent members as entities; an executive branch (Bundesrat) elected by both houses of the legislature in joint session; and a supreme court that renders decisions on matters affecting cantonal and federal relations. The Russian Federation’s arrangements, although of a markedly different kind, also reflect the cultural and linguistic diversity of the country. Depending on their size and on the territories they have historically occupied, ethnic minorities may have their own autonomous republic, provinceregion, or district. These divisions provide varying degrees of autonomy in setting local policies and provide a basis for the preservation of the minorities’ cultures. Some of these areas were integrated into the Russian Empire centuries ago, after the lands were taken from the Mongols of the Golden Horde, and others resisted occupation even late in the 19th century. It is not uncommon for Russians to constitute a plurality of the population in these areas. The national government consists of the executive branch, led by the nationally elected president; the parliament; and a judicial branch that resolves constitutional matters.

In other systems, federal arrangements are found in conjunction with a large measure of cultural homogeneity. The Constitution of the United States delegates to the federal government certain activities that concern the whole people, such as the conduct of foreign relations and war and the regulation of interstate commerce and foreign trade; certain other functions are shared between the federal government and the states; and the remainder are reserved for the states. Although these arrangements require two separate bodies of political officers, two judicial systems, and two systems of taxation, they also allow extensive interaction between the federal government and the states. Thus, the election of Congress and the president, the process of amending the Constitution, the levying of taxes, and innumerable other functions necessitate cooperation between the two levels of government and bring them into a tightly interlocking relationship.

Subnational political systems

Although national government is the dominant form of political organization in the modern world, an extraordinary range of political forms exists below the national level—tribal communities, the intimate political associations of villages and towns, the governments of regions and provinces, the complex array of urban and suburban governments, and the great political and administrative systems of the cities and the metropolises. These subnational entities are, in a sense, the basic political communities—the foundation on which all national political systems are built.

Tribal communities

The typical organization of mankind humankind in its early history was the tribe. Today, in many parts of the world, the tribal community is still a major form of human political organization. Even in advanced within more formal political systems, traces can still be found of its influence. Some of the Länder of modern Germany, such as Bavaria, Saxony, or Westphalia, have maintained their identity since the days of the Germanic tribal settlements. In England, too, many county boundaries can be explained only by reference to the territorial divisions in the period after the end of the Roman occupation.

In many African states, countries the tribe or ethnic group is still an effective community and a vehicle of political consciousness. Most of these states (Some African scholars, viewing the term tribe as pejorative and inaccurate, prefer to use ethnic group or other similar terms to describe such communities.) Most African countries are the successors to the administrative units established by colonial regimes and owe their present boundaries to the often arbitrary decisions of imperial bureaucracies or to the territorial accommodations of rival colonial powers. The result was often the splintering of the tribal communities or their aggregation in largely artificial entities.

Tribal loyalties continue to hamper nation-building efforts in some parts of the world where tribes were once the dominant political structure. Tribes may act through formal political parties like any other interest group. In some cases they simply act out their tribal bias through the machinery of the political system, and in others they function largely outside of formal political structures.

In its primary sense, the tribe is a community organized in terms of kinship, and its subdivisions are the intimate kindred groupings of moieties, gentes, and totem groups. Its territorial basis is rarely defined with any precision, and its institutions are typically the undifferentiated and intermittent structures of an omnifunctional social system. The leadership of the tribe is provided by the group of adult males, the lineage elders acting as tribal chiefs, the village headmen, or the shamans, or tribal magicians. These groups and individuals are the guardians of the tribal customs and of an oral tradition of law. Law is thus not made but rather invoked; its repository is the collective memory of the tribal council or chief men. This kind of customary law, sanctioned and hallowed by religious belief, nevertheless changes and develops, for each time it is declared something may be added or omitted to meet the needs of the occasion.

Rural communities

The village has traditionally been contrasted with the city: the village is the home of rural occupations and tied to the cycles of agricultural life, while the inhabitants of the city practice many trades, and its economy is founded on commerce and industry; the village is an intimate association of families, while the city is the locus of a mass population; the culture of the village is simple and traditional, while the city is the centre of the arts and sciences and of a complex cultural development. The village and the city offer even sharper contrasts as political communities. Historically, the village has been ruled by the primitive informal democracy of face-to-face discussion in the village council or by a headman whose decisions are supported by village elders or by other cooperative modes of government; urban government has never been such a simple matter, and monarchical, tyrannical, aristocratic, and oligarchic forms of rule have all flourished in the city. In the village, the boundaries among political, economic, religious, and other forms of action have not been as clearly drawn as in cities.

The origins and development of the apparatus of government can be seen most clearly in the simple political society of the rural community. The transformation of kin-bound societies with their informal, folk-sustained systems of sociopolitical organization into differentiated, hierarchical societies with complex political structures began with the enlargement of the rural community—an increase in its population, the diversification of its economy, or its interaction with other communities. The rudimentary organs of communal government were then elaborated, the communal functions received more specialized direction, and leadership roles were institutionalized. This was sometimes a process that led by gradual stages to the growth of cities. Elsewhere, however, as in the case of ancient Attica, the city was established as the result of a process of synoikismos, or the uniting of a number of tribal or village communities. This was undoubtedly the origin of Athens, and, according to its legendary history, Rome also was established as a result of the forcible unification of the tribes that dwelt on the hills surrounding the Palatine Hill.

Even in the nation-states of today’s world, the contrasts between the village or the town and the city as centres of human activity are readily apparent. In the country, life is more intimate, human contacts more informal, the structure of society more stable. In the city, the individual becomes anonymous, the contacts between people are mainly formal, and the standing of the individual or the family in society is subject to rapid change. In many contemporary systems, however, the differences in the forms of government of rural and urban communities appear to be growing less pronounced. In the United States, for example, rural institutions have been seriously weakened by the movement of large numbers of people to the city. The township meeting of New England and other forms of direct citizen participation in the affairs of the community have declined in importance and have often been displaced by more formal structures and the growth of local governmental bureaucracies.

Cities

Cities first emerged as complex forms of social and political organization in the valleys of the Euphrates and the Tigris, the Nile, the Huang HoHe, and the Yangtze. These early cities broke dramatically with the patterns of primitive tribal life and the rural societies from which they sprang. Kinship as the basis of society was replaced by status determined by class and occupation; the primitive magical animistic or shamanistic leaders of the tribe were displaced by temple priesthoods presiding over highly developed religious institutions and functioning as important agencies of social control; earlier systems of rule by the tribal chieftains and the simple forms of communal leadership gave way to kingships endowed with magical powers and important religious functions; and specialized functionaries in the royal courts became responsible for supervising new kinds of governmental activity. Many other developments contributed to the growing centralization of power in these city civilizations. Barter was replaced by more effective systems of exchange, and the wealth generated in commerce and the specialized city trades became both an object of taxation and an instrument of power. Class distinctions emerged as the result of a division of labour and advances in technical development. A military order and a professional soldiery were created and trained in new techniques of warfare, and a slave class provided the work force for large-scale projects of irrigation, fortification, and royal architecture. As these developments proceeded, the city was able to project its power even further into the surrounding countryside, to establish its rule over villages and other cities in its sphere, and finally to become the centre of such early empires as those of Sumeria, Egypt, China, Babylonia, Assyria, and Persia.

A very different form of city life emerged among the Greeks. The Greek polis also broke with the folkways of primitive tribal society, but its political development was in striking contrast to the despotism of the Oriental city empires and their massive concentrations of power in the hands of king and priest. As the polis transcended its origins in village life, the powers of the tribal chief dwindled and passed into the hands of aristocratic families. The kingship of Homeric tradition vanished, the “kings” who remained became mere dignitaries in the religious and ceremonial life of the city, and new magistracies and other civic offices were founded. These offices became the focus of factional struggle among the aristocratic families and later, with the weakening of aristocratic rule, the chief prizes in a contest of power between the nobility and the common citizens. Eventually, these developments issued in the characteristic form of Greek city government. A citizen body, always a much narrower group than the total population but often as numerous as the population of freeborn males, acquired power in the direction of the city government through the election of its officers and direct participation in the city councils. Although often interrupted by episodes of oligarchic or tyrannical rule and by periods of civic dissension and class rivalry, the main theme of governmental development in the Greek city was the elaboration of structures that permitted the control of political affairs by its citizens.

Autonomous cities also sprang up in Europe in the later Middle Ages. Medieval city life, although it differed from that of the polis and was coloured by the forms of feudal society, also emphasized the principle of cooperative association. Indeed, for the first time in the history of city civilization, the majority of the inhabitants of the city were free. The development of trades, the growth of commerce, and the mobilization of wealth emancipated the city from its feudal environment, and the merchant and craft guilds became the matrices of a new kind of city democracy. In time, the guilds were transformed into closed corporations and became a basis for oligarchic control; and the city’s independence was threatened by the rise of the new nation-states. Tempting targets for the ambition of kings, Venice, Genoa, Florence, Milan, Cologne, Amsterdam, Hamburg, and other free cities of Europe eventually succumbed to monarchical control. Theirs was an important legacy, however, for the political order of the medieval city was a powerful influence in the development of the constitutional structures of the modern democratic state.

Although cities are no longer independent, the almost universal increase in urban population has made them more important than ever before as centres of human activity. The political organization of modern cities differs from country to country. Even within the same nation-state, there are often important contrasts in the structures of city government. In the United States, for example, three principal types of city government are usually distinguished: the council–manager council-manager form, the mayor–council mayor-council form, and the commission form.

More than half of all Many American cities with populations between 25over 10,000 and 250,000 operate under council–manager council-manager governments. In council–manager council-manager systems the council is generally small, elected at large on a nonpartisan ballot for overlapping four-year terms; no other offices are directly elected, and the mayor, who presides at council meetings and performs mainly ceremonial functions, is chosen by the council from among its members. The manager, a professional city administrator, is selected by the council, serves at the council’s pleasure, and is responsible for supervising the city departments and municipal programs, preparing the budget, and controlling expenditures.

Mayor–council Mayor-council governments are found in two basic forms, the “weak” mayor and the “strong” mayor. The former was typical of the 19th-century municipal organization and is now mainly confined to smaller citiesof less than 25,000 population; the latter is a common arrangement in cities with significantly larger populations. In weak-mayor–council governments, a number of officials, elected or appointed for lengthy terms, wield important administrative powers; the council, typically elected by divisions of the city called wards, is responsible for the direction of the major city agencies; and the mayor’s powers of appointment and removal and his control over the city budget are severely limited. In many cases, strong-mayor–council governments evolved from weak-mayor–council systems as an independently elected mayor won the power of veto over council ordinances, strengthened his control over appointment and removal, and established himself as the city’s chief budgetary officer; at the same time, also, the elective administrative officers and the semi-autonomous appointive boards and commissions were often eliminated and the number of councilmen reduced.

The commission plan, which is now found in fewer than 200 cities of more than 10,000 population, has declined in popularity since the early 20th century and is found mainly in smaller cities, concentrates legislative and executive powers in the hands of a small group of commissioners. The commissioners serve individually as the heads of administrative departments and choose one of their number to act as a ceremonial mayor without executive authority.

The variety in the governmental structures of American cities is paralleled in many other countries, for everywhere in the modern world the government of the city continues to challenge man’s political invention. Although no longer sovereign, cities are the centres of modern civilization and—both in terms of the services demanded of them and the range and importance of the functions they exercise—the most important of contemporary subnational political systems. Moreover, it is in the cities that most of the problems of modern industrial society seem to have their focus. These problems are not only governmental but also technological, cultural, and economic. They are found in their most acute form in the great metropolitan centres and in that vast urban agglomeration known as the megalopolis. In political terms, the issue that is posed appears to be whether these huge centres of population can continue as effective communities with democratically manageable governments.

Regions

In many contemporary national political systems the forces of history and administrative necessity have joined to produce regional communities at an intermediate level between the local and the national community. In some cases—the Swiss canton, the English county, the German Land, and the American state—these regional communities possess their own political institutions and exercise governmental functions. In other cases, however, the territorial community is a product of ethnic, cultural, linguistic, physiographic, or economic factors and maintains its identity without the support of political structures.

As subnational political systems, regional communities are sometimes based in tradition, even tracing their origin to a period prior to the founding of the nationcountry; in other cases, they are modern administrative units created by national governments for their own purposes. Examples of both types may be found in the history of regionalism in France and its complex pattern of internal territorial divisions. Before the French Revolution, France was divided into ancient provinces—Burgundy, Gascony, Brittany, Normandy, Provence, Anjou, Poitou, and others. After the Revolution, in what seems to have been an effort to discourage regional patriotism and threats of separatism, the Napoleonic government superimposed a new regional structure of départements on the old provincial map. More than a century and a half later, in the era of rapid communications and national economic planning, the French national government announced a regrouping of the Napoleonic départements into much larger Gaullist régions. Recognizing, perhaps, the continuing strength of the provincial attachments of Gascon, Breton, Norman, and Provençal and the survival of old regional folk cultures with their distinctive patterns of speech, the new régions were given boundaries similar in many cases to the traditional provincial boundaries of pre-republican France.

The history of the French regional communities is not a special case, for political, administrative, economic, and technical forces have led many other national governments to replace traditional territorial divisions with new regional units. In England, for example, the traditional structure of county governments (52 in number) was replaced in the late 19th century by a system of administrative counties(61 plus London); and, in 1969, a royal commission proposed a further reform that would abolish 39 counties, many of which in turn lost area to other units of local government in the 1970s and the 1990s. Attempts have also been made to use older regional communities as the infrastructure for new systems of regional government. Thus, the Italian constitution provides for semi-autonomous government in five special regions—Valle a number of regions, five of which—Valle d’Aosta, Sardinia, Sicily, Trentino-Alto Trentino–Alto Adige, and Friuli-Venezia Giulia—whichFriuli–Venezia Giulia—enjoy a special autonomous status and which, in different ways, are historically distinct from the rest of Italy. In yet other cases the fear of competition from regional governments or of separatist movements has led national governments to make various efforts to resist the development of regional political structures. Again, Italy provides a convenient example, for its constitution requires the establishment of 14 other autonomous regions, but Italian governments refused to implement this provision of the 1947 constitution until recentlyestablish all the regions provided for in the 1948 constitution until 1970. It should be noted that the Italian republic of 1870–1922 and its Fascist fascist successor state also made similar efforts to combat regional political development, the former by the creation of a large number of administrative provinces and the latter by establishing corporazione to represent occupations regardless of geographic location.

In several modern states the growth of vast conurbations and the rise of the megalopolis have prompted the development of new other kinds of regional governmental structures. The Port of London Authority , and the Port Authority of New York Authority, and the San Francisco Bay Area Transit Authority and New Jersey are examples of regional systems designed to serve the needs of urban communities that have outgrown the boundaries of existing city governments. New Other regional structures have also resulted from the increased responsibility of national governments for the administration of comprehensive social and economic programs. The Tennessee Valley Authority, for example, is both a national agency and a regional government whose decisions affect the lives of the inhabitants of all the states and cities in its sphere. Other Further examples of new such regional administrative structures include the zonal councils established in India for social and economic planning purposes, the districts of the Interstate Commerce Commission in the United States, and the as well as governmental and economic units established in Britain to deal with the problems of industrially depressed areas.

Issues of classification

Types of classification schemes

The almost infinite range of political systems has been barely suggested in this brief review. Confronted by the vast array of political forms, political scientists have attempted to classify and categorize, to develop typologies and models, or in some other way to bring analytic order to the bewildering variety of data. Many different schemes have been developed. There is, for example, the classical distinction between governments in terms of the number of rulers—government by one man (monarchy or tyranny), government by the few (aristocracy or oligarchy), and government by the many (democracy). There are schemes classifying governments in terms of their key institutions (for example, parliamentarism, cabinet government, presidentialism). There are classifications that group systems according to basic principles of political authority or the forms of legitimacy (charismatic, traditional, rational–legalrational-legal, and others). Other schemes distinguish between different kinds of economic organization in the system (the laissez-faire state, the corporate state, and Socialist socialist and Communist communist forms of state economic organization) or between the rule of different economic classes (feudal, bourgeois, and capitalist). And there are modern efforts to compare the functions of political systems (capabilities, conversion functions, and system maintenance and adaptation functions) and to classify them in terms of structure, function, and political culture.

Although none is comprehensive, each of these principles of analysis has some validity, and the classifying schemes that are based on them, although in some cases no longer relevant to modern forms of political organization, have often been a major influence on the course of political development. The most influential of such classifying schemes is undoubtedly the attempt of Plato and Aristotle to define the basic forms of government in terms of the number of power holders and their use or abuse of power. Plato held that there was a natural succession of the forms of government: an aristocracy (the ideal form of government by the few) that abuses its power develops into a timocracy (in which the rule of the best men, who value wisdom as the highest political good, is succeeded by the rule of men who are primarily concerned with honour and martial virtue), which through greed develops into an oligarchy (the perverted form of government by the few), which in turn is succeeded by a democracy (rule by the many); through excess, the democracy becomes an anarchy (a lawless government), to which a tyrant is inevitably the successor. Abuse of power in the Platonic typology is defined by the rulers’ neglect or rejection of the prevailing law or custom (nomos); the ideal forms are thus nomos observing (ennomon), and the perverted forms are nomos neglecting (paranomon). Although disputing the character of this implacable succession of the forms of government, Aristotle also based his classification on the number of rulers and distinguished between good and bad forms of government. In his typology it was the rulers’ concern for the common good that distinguished the ideal from perverted forms of government. The ideal forms in the Aristotelian scheme are monarchy, aristocracy, and polity (a term conveying some of the meaning of the modern concept of “constitutional democracy”); when perverted by the selfish abuse of power, they are transformed respectively into tyranny, oligarchy, and ochlocracy (or the mob rule of lawless democracy). The concept of the polity, a “mixed” or blended constitutional order, fascinated political theorists for another millennium. To achieve its advantages, innumerable writers from Polybius to St. Thomas Aquinas experimented with the construction of models giving to each social class the control of appropriate institutions of government.

Another very influential classifying scheme was the distinction between monarchies and republics. In the writings of Machiavelli and others, the tripartism of classical typologies was replaced by the dichotomy of princely and republican rule. Sovereignty in the monarchy or the principality is in the hands of a single ruler; in republics, sovereignty is vested in a plurality or collectivity of power holders. Reducing aristocracy and democracy to the single category of republican rule, Machiavelli also laid the basis in his analysis of the exercise of princely power for a further distinction between despotic and nondespotic forms of government. In the work of Montesquieu, for example, despotism, or the lawless exercise of power by the single ruler, is contrasted with the constitutional forms of government of the monarchy and the republic. As a result of the decline of monarchies and the rise of new totalitarian states terming themselves republics, this traditional classification is now, of course, of little more than historical interest.

Modern classifying systems

The usefulness of all the traditional classifications has been undermined by the momentous changes in the political organization of the modern world. Typologies based on the number of power holders or the formal structures of the state are rendered almost meaningless by the standardization of “democratic” forms, the deceptive similarities in the constitutional claims and governmental institutions of regimes that actually differ markedly in their political practices, and the rise of new political orders in the non-Western world. A number of modern writers have attempted to overcome this difficulty by constructing classifying schemes that give primary importance to social, cultural, economic, or psychological factors. The most influential of such schemes is the Marxist typology, which classifies types of rule on the basis of economic class divisions and defines the ruling class as that which controls the means of production in the state. A monistic typology that also emphasized the importance of a ruling class was developed by an Italian theorist of the early 20th century, Gaetano Mosca. In Mosca’s writings all forms of government appear as mere facades for oligarchy or the rule of a political “elite” that centres power in its own hands. Another classification, which distinguishes between “legitimate” and “revolutionary” governments, was suggested by Mosca’s contemporary Guglielmo Ferrero. Using a sociopsychological approach to the relations between rulers and ruled, Ferrero held that a legitimate government is one whose citizens voluntarily accept its rule and freely give it their loyalty; in revolutionary systems, the government fears the people and is feared by them. Legitimacy and leadership are also the basis of a typology developed by the German sociologist Max Weber. In Weber’s scheme there are three basic types of rule: charismatic, in which the authority or legitimacy of the ruler rests upon some genuine sense of calling and in which the followers submit because of their faith or conviction in the ruler’s exemplary character; traditional, in which, as in hereditary monarchy, leadership authority is historically or traditionally accepted; and rational–legalrational-legal, in which leadership authority is the outgrowth of a legal order that has been effectively rationalized and where there is a prevailing belief in the legality of normative rules or commands. The Weberian typology has been elaborated by a number of recent writers who have found it particularly useful for comparing and classifying the emergent political orders of the non-Western world.

A serviceable classification of political systems must penetrate beneath formal appearances to underlying realities; these realities, however, do not consist only of the facts of social and economic organization. Important differences often exist between political systems having very similar socioeconomic structures. That is why some recent sociological classifications and schemes of analysis fail as tools of political inquiry: they cannot effectively distinguish between certain societies whose political orders are full of contrasts. The political system itself must be the primary focus of inquiry and the phenomena of politics the principal facts of investigation. Such an approach may involve many different kinds of analysis, but it must begin with an examination of the ways in which power is acquired and transferred, exercised, and controlled. This is important for comparing advanced political orders and also for drawing important distinctions between regimes in the underdeveloped areas of the world.

Governments classified by mode of succession

A key problem of all political orders is that of succession. “The king is dead; long live the king” was the answer, not always uncontested, of European hereditary monarchy to the question of who should rule after the death of the king. A second, closely related problem is in what manner and by whom a present ruler may be replaced or deprived of power. To this second question hereditary monarchy gave no definite answer, although the concept of diffidatio, or the severance of the bond of allegiance between king and feudal lord, was invoked more than once in the medieval period. Political systems, even those of primitive tribal societies, have approached both problems in a variety of ways. Anthropological records show that tribal chiefs or kings were sometimes selected as a result of ritual tests or the display of magical signs and proofs of divine origin, usually as determined by the tribal elders or magical leaders; in other cases, a principle of heredity, often diluted by a choice among heirs in terms of physique or warrior ability, was applied; in still other cases, the chief was elected, often from among the adult males of a select group of families. Techniques for the removal of tribal rulers were equally varied. Sometimes the ruler would be killed after a specified period or when his magical powers weakened or when his physical prowess or health failed; in other cases the chief was exposed to periodic tests of his magical powers or required to accept challenges to combat from other qualified candidates for rule; and in some cases the elders could remove him from office.

Techniques for assuring the succession are also varied in the modern world. Succession procedures range from the complex hieratic traditional Tibetan process of identifying a reincarnated Dalai Lama , which was practiced until quite recently in Tibet, to the subtle , informal procedures by which parliamentary majorities choose a successor to the office of prime minister in Britain. In fact, however, the succession practices of modern political systems appear to be of four main types: (1) heredity, (2) constitutional prescription, (3) election, and (4) force.

Hereditary succession

Although dictators still occasionally seek to establish their sons as their heirs, they usually rely on force rather than the claims of heredity to achieve their object. Apart from a few states , mostly in the Arab world, where the dynastic ruler is the effective head of the government, the hereditary principle of succession is now almost exclusively confined to the constitutional monarchies of western Europe. There is some irony in the fact that the line of succession is more securely established in these monarchies now than at any point in their earlier history: intradynastic struggle, it appears, is much less likely when kingship is mainly ceremonial. Heredity may be reinforced or modified by constitutional prescription: this was the case, for example, of the famous Act of Settlement that secured the Hanoverian succession in Britain.

Succession by constitutional prescription

A leading example of succession by constitutional prescription is the United States. Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution of the U.S. provides:

In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by law provide for the case of removal, death, resignation, or inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what officer shall then act as President, and such officer shall act accordingly, until the disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.

A constitutional amendment was The Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1967elaborating , elaborated these procedures to include further arrangements for dealing with the problem of presidential disability, as well as for filling a vacant vice presidency. The original language of the Constitution has been the basis for the peaceful succession of Vice Presidents John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry S. Truman, and Lyndon B. Johnson. Gerald R. Ford succeeded to the presidency on the basis of the provisions of the Twenty-fifth Amendment. Constitutionally prescribed arrangements for assuring ensuring the succession are not always so successful, and many states countries whose constitutions contain very similar provisions have experienced succession crises that were resolved only by violence.

Succession by election

Election is a principle of succession also frequently combined with force. In cases of closely contested elections or where there is doubt as to the validity or proper form of the election, the result is often a disputed succession. The Great Schism in the papacy in the 14th century and the disputed succession to the elective kingship of Hungary in the 16th century are examples of the failure of elective systems to assure an orderly succession. Force is the effective basis of succession in several contemporary states in which pro forma electoral confirmation is given to a ruler who seizes power.

The problem of succession imposes great strains on any political order: the continuity of rule is broken, established patterns of action are interrupted, and the future suddenly becomes uncertain. This political crisis tests the character of regimes in ways that are of some importance for comparative political analysis. A number of interesting comparisons may be drawn from the study of succession practices, but perhaps the most important is the distinction between those systems in which the problem is resolved primarily by force and those systems in which heredity, constitutional prescription, or election assure a peaceful and orderly succession.

Political orders are subjected to another kind of strain when the rule of their present power holders is challenged and the question arises of depriving them of authority. This is the problem of the transfer of power: whether, in what way, and by whom a present ruler may be displaced. Like succession, it is a recurrent problem in all political systems, and, as in the case of succession practices, the ways in which political systems respond to the strains involved offer important clues to their character. It is, in a sense, the fundamental political crisis, for all systems are in some way shaken, often violently, sometimes to the point of destruction, by the struggles between established rulers and their rivals.

Succession by force

Revolutions, which are the result of the crisis in its most extreme form, involve the overthrow not merely of the government but of the political order itself. Typically, a revolution is preceded by a series of strains within the system: challenges to the authority of the government mount, and its legitimacy is increasingly questioned; the exercise of power becomes coercive, and the challenge to rule assumes ever more violent forms; eventually, the struggle comes to a dramatic climax in the destruction of the old order. The coup d’etat is another form of violent response to the crisis of rule, but it is distinguished from the revolution in that it involves the overthrow only of the government: the political order is not immediately affected, for the coup is managed by an individual or group within the government or within the ruling class. In some cases, however, the coup d’etat is merely a preliminary stage to revolution. Sometimes this happens when the new ruler leads a governmentally imposed revolution: this was the role played by Napoleon I, Napoleon III, Mussolini, and Hitler. At other times, coups are actually prompted by fear of revolution but succeed only in further weakening the claims to legitimacy of the existing order: this has recently been the case in some countries in the non-Western world where conservative-led coups were quickly overthrown by revolutionary movements. In addition to revolutions and coups d’etat, the crisis of rule may prompt other forms of violent political reaction, including civil war and secession, resistance movements and rebellions, guerrilla warfare and terrorism, class warfare, and peasant revolts.

The causes of internal conflict leading to the forcible overthrow of governments are extremely varied. They include tensions created by rapid social and economic development; the rise of new social classes and the refusal of established elites to share their power; problems of the distribution of wealth and the grievances of different economic groups and interests; the rise of corrosive social and political philosophies and the estrangement of intellectuals; conflict of opinions over the ends of government; factional struggles among power holders or within the ruling class; the rise of a charismatic leader; oppressive rule that alienates powerful groups; weak rule that tolerates antigovernmental or revolutionary movements; and many different combinations of these and other social, economic, and political factors. All political systems experience some of these conditions with some frequency. Yet there are a number of modern states countries that have avoided internal wars and the forcible overthrow of their governments for considerable periods.

It appears that rulers in the contemporary world are generally safe from violent challenges if they possess an effective monopoly of military, economic, and political power, linked with certain important social controls; or, alternatively, if they are obliged to exercise limited powers for specified periods and are required to yield office to rivals who meet certain qualifications. The first is the definition of a modern totalitarian regime, fully and efficiently organized; the second describes the governments of several contemporary constitutional democracies. In the first case, the government secures itself by force combined with social and psychological means of preventing the formation of opposition. In the second case, alternatives to internal war are provided by the opportunities for oppositions to influence the exercise of power and ultimately to replace the government. The great achievement of constitutional democracy has been to give reasonable security to governments from forcible overthrow by compelling them to accept limitations on their power, by requiring them to forgo the use of force against rivals who agree to accept the same limitations, and by establishing well-known legal procedures through which these rivals may themselves constitute the government.

Autocratic versus nonautocratic rule

The foregoing discussion has suggested a distinction among political systems in terms of the role played by force in the acquisition and transfer of power. The role of force is vital, also, in distinguishing among political systems in terms of the exercise and control of power. Here the contrast is essentially between “autocratic” and “nonautocratic” governments, for totalitarianism is only a recent species of autocracy, to which constitutionalism is the principal contemporary antithesis. Autocracy is characterized by the concentration of power in a single centre, be it an individual dictator or a group of power holders such as a committee or a party leadership. This centre relies on force to suppress opposition and to limit social developments that might eventuate in opposition. The power of the centre is not subject to effective controls or limited by genuine sanctions: it is absolute power. In contrast, nonautocratic government is characterized by the existence of several centres, each of which shares in the exercise of power. Nonautocratic rule allows the development of social forces that generate a variety of interests and opinions. It also subjects the power holders to reciprocal controls and to effective sanctions of law.

In appearance, autocracy may sometimes be difficult to distinguish from nonautocratic rule. Often, autocracies attempt to borrow legitimacy by adopting the language of the constitutions of nonautocratic regimes or by establishing similar institutions. It is a common practice, for example, in many modern totalitarian states to establish institutions—parliaments or assemblies, elections and parties, courts and legal codes—that differ little in appearance from the institutional structures of constitutional democracies. Similarly, the language of totalitarian constitutions is often couched in terms of the doctrines of popular rule or democracy. The difference is that in totalitarian regimes neither the institutions nor the constitutional provisions act as effective checks on the power of the single centre: they are essentially facades for the exercise of power through hierarchical procedures that subject all the officials of the state to the commands of the ruling individual or group. The underlying realities of autocratic rule are always the concentration of power in a single centre and the mobilization of force to prevent the emergence of opposition.

Totalitarianism, as already noted, has been a chief form of autocratic rule; it is distinguished from previous forms in its use of state power to impose an official ideology on its citizens. Nonconformity of opinion is treated as the equivalent of resistance or opposition to the government, and a formidable apparatus of compulsion, including various kinds of state police or secret police, is kept in being to enforce the orthodoxy of the proclaimed doctrines of the state. A single party, centrally directed and composed exclusively of loyal supporters of the regime, is the other typical feature of totalitarianism. The party is at once an instrument of social control, a vehicle for ideological indoctrination, and the body from which the ruling group recruits its members.

In the modern world, constitutional democracy is the chief type of nonautocratic government. The minimal definition in institutional terms of a constitutional democracy is that it should provide for a regularized system of periodic elections with a free choice of candidates, the opportunity to organize competing political parties, adult suffrage, decisions by majority vote with protection of minority rights, an independent judiciary, constitutional safeguards for basic civil liberties, and the opportunity to change any aspect of the governmental system through agreed procedures. Two features of constitutional democracy require emphasis in contrasting it with modern totalitarian government: the constitution, or basic law, and the political party. A constitution, as the example of British constitutional democracy suggests, need not be a single written instrument; indeed, the essence of a constitution is that it formalizes a set of fundamental norms governing the political community and determining the relations between the rulers and the people and the interaction among the centres of power. In most modern constitutional democracies, however, there is a constitutional document providing for fixed limitations on the exercise of power. These provisions usually include three major elements: an assignment of certain specified state functions to different state organs or offices, the delimitation of the powers of each organ or office, and the establishment of arrangements for their cooperative interaction; a list of individual rights or liberties that are protected against the exercise of state power; and a statement of the methods by which the constitution may be amended. With these provisions a concentration of power in the hands of a single ruler is prevented, certain areas of political and social life are made immune to governmental intervention, and peaceable change in the political order is made possible. The political party is the other chief instrument of constitutional democracy, for it is the agency through which the electorate is involved in both the exercise and transfer of power. In contrast with the centralized, autocratic direction of the totalitarian single-party organization, with its emphasis on ideological conformity and restricted membership, the political parties of constitutional democracy are decentralized, concerned with the integration of many interests and beliefs, and open to public participation. In constitutional democracies there is usually some measure of competition among two or more parties, each of which, if it cannot hope to form a future government, has some ability to influence the course of state action. The party in a constitutional democracy is at once a means of representing a mass electorate in the exercise of power and also a device for allowing the peaceful replacement of one set of power holders with another.

The distinction between autocratic and nonautocratic rule should not conceal the existence of intermediate types that combine elements of both. In these cases, also, the best procedure for comparative purposes is to investigate the power configurations underlying the formal structures and to examine the extent to which power is concentrated in a single centre or the role that is played by force in the maintenance of the regime. It is a type of analysis that, by guiding attention to the relative weight of coercive and consensual power and the scope of individual freedom in the political order, allows comparisons between systems in terms of their most important attributes.

Governments classified by stage of development

Analyzing political change

Political life is shaped by a wide variety of factors, including social and cultural conditions, economic organization, intellectual and philosophical influences, geography or climate, and historical circumstance. Recurrent attempts have been made to reduce this range of variables to analytically manageable dimensions. This is partly the motive, for example, of Marxist and other efforts to relate specific types of political systems to stages of economic development or particular kinds of socioeconomic organization. Although interesting interrelations between political and economic development have been discovered, such monistic, or single-factor, approaches are inadequate to the task of explaining political change. The problem is not only that there are many factors that should be examined but also that they are found in different combinations from one society to another. All political orders are unique as products of history and creations of the peculiar forces and conditions of their environment. A second problem that confronts comparative analysis is the difficulty of devising measures of political development. The definition of what is modern or what constitutes an advanced or developed political system has troubled many recent writers. Clearly, the older notions of development toward the goals of constitutionalism or democracy must now be seriously questioned, and to judge the maturity of a political system in terms of the extent to which it adopts any particular set of institutions or techniques of rule is an equally doubtful procedure. Another difficulty is that political change is not simply a reaction to “objective” factors such as economic forces but also the product of conscious manipulation. In explaining the growth and development of political systems it is impossible to ignore the fact that men, having considered the advantages and disadvantages of different forms of government, often decide to adopt one form rather than another. A similar problem arises from the fact that the nature of the interaction between political systems and their environment is extremely complex. For example, to treat the political system as merely the outgrowth of particular patterns of social or economic organization is to ignore the fact that changes in social and economic structures are often the product, sometimes the intended product, of governmental action.

Emergence of advanced nation-states

These difficulties of analysis have prevented the emergence of any satisfactory theory to explain the processes of political change or growth. In the absence of such a theory, however, several writers have recently attempted to identify certain basic phases in the development of national political systems. For example, five major steps in the emergence of the advanced nation-states of the modern world are often distinguished: (1) unification and independence or autonomy; (2) development and differentiation of political institutions and political roles; (3) transfer of power from traditional elites; (4) further institutional and political role differentiation accompanied by the development of a number of organized social interests and growth in governmental functions; and (5) use of state power in attempts to guide or control social and economic activity, extensive exploitation of resources as the result of technological development, and full participation in the international political system.

Other writers distinguish among “traditional,” “transitional,” and “modern” societies in an effort to identify differences and regularities in social, economic, cultural, and political development. The social structure of the traditional society is described as hierarchical, class bound, based on kinship, and divided into relatively few effectively organized social groupings; its economic basis is primarily agricultural, and industry and commerce are relatively undeveloped; its political institutions are those of sacred monarchy, rule by a nobility, and various forms of particularism. The social system of the transitional society is typified by the formation of new classes, especially a middle class and a proletariat, and conflict among ethnic, religious, and cultural groupings; its economic system experiences major tensions as the result of technological development, the growth of industry, urbanization, and the use of rapid communications; its political institutions are typically authoritarian, although constitutional forms also make their appearance. Modernity is seen as the age of high social mobility, equality, universal education, mass communications, increasing secularism, and sociocultural integration; in its economic system, the modern society experiences a further technological revolution, massive urbanization, and the development of a fully diversified economy; its political institutions are those of democracy and modified totalitarianism, and, in either case, a specialized bureaucracy is used to carry on the expanding functions of government.

These efforts to identify stages of “modernization” are poor substitutes for a general theory of political change, but they serve to emphasize the increasing complexity of all the structures—social, economic, and political—of the modern state. The elaboration of the institutions and procedures of modern government appears to be partly a reflection of the social and economic forces at work in the contemporary world and partly the result of efforts to control these forces through governmental action. The complex structures of advanced political orders are treated in the discussion that follows.